"The Heart of a Whale" by Anna Pignataro

I don't often review books on my blog, but tonight I had the absolute pleasure of losing myself in the magical language and illustrations within Anna Pignataro's gorgeous new picture book, The heart of a whale.

This book is a useful addition for those studying oceans, whales, ocean environments, loneliness, hope and friendship.  However, it is also one of those magical picture books that you just want to revisit and spend time with, as it touches you - a special dance between text and image.

It is a wonderful mentor text for exploring language in use. Anna shares the song of the whale through the metaphor of music, with specific musical terms inciting imagery including scenes involving a sonata, symphony, orchestra, ballet and lullaby, as the whale continues "warmly weaving a path of starlight" through the ocean.  

The language in this picture book appears simple, but is magical, for example, when the whale sighs, "His sigh drifted away like a wish. A wish that the ocean carefully gathered and carried for him."

Figurative language can be foregrounded using this book as a mentor text, including the author's use of simile and personification.  It would also be a wonderful choice for explicitly teaching visualising as a comprehension strategy.  

The water colour illustrations are divine, weaving together with the text to make this such a memorable read that will be enjoyed time and time again.  

What a wonderful gift this book would be!

Teaching phonemic awareness and phonics - the hands-on way!

I have been having fun putting together some hands-on phonemic awareness and phonics sets for our classes.  I started purchasing some mini objects and then sorted them into their major vowel sound groups - both short and long vowel sounds.

This is a work in progress, but I thought I would share progress along the way :).  Approaches to the teaching of phonics are often contested, with teachers often having strong views about "the best way".  My interest in putting together these hands-on kits, was to support oral language development and hands-on manipulation of real life (miniature) objects.   I intend to link this with the exploration of examples of language in use through rich examples from children's literature.

The Australian Literacy Educators' Association (ALEA) has published a paper, Phonics: its place in the literacy story  by Robyn Ewing (University of Sydney) and Marguerite Maher (Notre Dame University).  ALEA has also published a free resource for download, The place of phonics in learning to read and write by Marie Emmitt, David Hornsby and Lorraine Wilson.  You may also be interested in David Hornsby's response to the proposed Year 1 Phonics Test in relation to the Australian Curriculum: English.  You can read that paper here.

These are just some of the miniature objects that are sorted according to their major vowel sounds (e.g. short /a/, long a etc.).   

 

This is a work in progress, so I will be posting updates, including my selected picture book titles for teaching the short and long vowel sounds.  My list will include picture books by Aussie authors and recently published titles, including books that can be used for shared reading, with repeated readings focusing on the explicit teaching of phonics in context.

Have a terrific week, everyone!